please listen to the bus driver

why doesn't anyone listen to me when i make my announcements? well, they do, but not often enough. twice this past week, i've had to have words with people over the usage of cell phones on the bus. my normal spiel usually goes through the normal safety gamut of 'staying seated until the coach has come to a full and complete stop,' holding onto the seatbacks while getting up to use the restroom and claiming their baggage from only the right hand side and the sort of glad handing stuff too, like thanks for riding my bus company, but the bit that i throw in about cell phone use, while it is company policy, is a compromise of mine own. i tell people that the use of cell phones is prohibited aboard this coach, BUT and I throw in a big drawn out BUT, that if they must make or take a call that they can do so, while i realise that there are circumstances that you have to use a phone in public, BUT that they must do so in a manner that shows courtesy and respect to their fellow passsengers, that is, i add, for people who can't take a hint or read between the lines that they must keep their calls short and speak softly. i try, i do try to keep everyone happy and walk a fine line, but like abe himself said, you can't please all the people all the time, but some of them sometimes...
so, both offenders were on trips outta new york and the confines of the city and maybe people were calling their kin and looking to get home and couldn't wait, but... the first girl sat in the front seat behind my head and got a phone ring, ok. and promptly began to tell the caller about her experience of 'getting jumped and me and so and so got 'fist-fightin''. ok. 'but jimmy was the boy and he is my man and he stood up for me...' blah, blah, blah, ok. so cell phone conversations in public are a pet peeve of mine, especially when i have to sit and drive while my mind tries to mentally fit in the missing part of the one way conversation that you can hear and and driving a 20 ton bus should take up the majority of my concentration and not the details of a gang jumping. and then i began to relent in my outrage and sort of let her call go. the bus wasn't crowded, she wasn't near too many people and for the majority of the phone call, she just listened to the caller speak to her and mutely spoke yes or no every thirty seconds or so. ok. but then the second call came and this one was much like the first, yes or no now and then. ok. then the third call and she began to get a little more animated and i began to feel outraged again. here my good grace was being taken advantage of and she had to have heard my announcement leaving the port authority.
we neared the harriman exit when i handed her a company card outlining what i had said about cell phones but in a more direct way and asked her to keep it down and curtail the phone call because it was not allowed. i had thought about announcing it on the loudspeakers and publicly shaming her, but i relented. and so did she. i found the company cell phone policy card left on the floor after the trip. the second call came from two asian travelers who didn't seem to speak much english and granted, maybe they could not understand my announcement, but receiving a loud ring at 10pm and speaking out loud at the top of your voice in a foreign tongue (which is sort of worse when you can hear only something that you can't understand and can't fill in the other half, it becomes just so much gibberish...). harriman again and this time i was a bit louder. speaking into the darkness behind me i said with the full intention of shaming this non- English speaking or not, still rude man in front of the bus that could he please keep the phone level down and cut it short? it ended abruptly. i'm not sure if he just hung up on the caller or not, but it was over like that and then i started to feel a little bad. had i interrupted something important? nah. but i still cannot figure out why people think that they can ignore the announcement. what if i had said they had to jump ship by opening the windows at their destination because i was planning on blowing the bus up as soon as i slowed down to 30mph? i guess that i wouldn't go alone.
and then there are the people who have no sense of direction or who follow you blindly like sheep. one night i was on a drive to utica, the bus' destination sign brightly and cheerily lit up with the black and white blaring letters u-t-i-c-a. i pulled up at a flag stop heading north and people on the other side of the road facing south came running desperately. i got off the bus and they yelled across the road, are you going to new york? i yelled back, and pointed in my direction. i'm going north, to utica! and then pointed in the other direction that i had come from, new york is south, that way! but i get this all the time. i drive into a station with the kingston destination sign on after a long day on the road and spent walking around the port authority and people ask me, are you going to new york? i get a special kind of glee being able to say, no, i CAME from new york. i am NOT going to new york. and then there are the people who put themselves completely in your hands. a couple of days ago a guy wearing large headphones and obviously listening to music handed me a ticket. it read new paltz-kingston-woodstock. i was heading to new york and already a bit miffed at this fact and a bit more by the fact that when i said hi, how are you to him, he completely ignored me behind the silence of his headphones and shoved the ticket into my hand. i looked at his ticket, tore nothing off and handed it back. i'm going to new york, not woodstock, i told him. he started walking towards the bus door, blindly, missing this important fact that i was heading in the opposite direction that he was. hey, this isn't the bus you want! i snapped. next time take off your headphones and we can have a conversation! he didn't hear this either. i wonder where he is now. i could have a destination sign up for honolulu or kiev and people would still get on.
so, ladies and gentlemen, please the next time that you ride a bus, please, please, please listen to me... and yourselves... or we may go up in flames together or you may end up on the moon.